BIGGEST IMPROVEMENT AWARD

WHAT SHE SAID: Thomas Cook is ‘a high tech, high touch experience across all customer touch points with an omni-channel approach’.

WHAT SHE MEANT: ‘Customer touch points’ sounds slightly intrusive. She means the company’s new website.

ANY PREVIOUS: This is from the woman who said her ambition was to turn the group into a ‘Voyager Android’. Then back in March she said decisions at Thomas Cook will be ‘enabled by a comprehensive data cube’. We still do not know what either of these phrases mean.

EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES: Since learning of her past convictions from Dogberry, Green has done her best to amend her ways and has slashed her use of meaningless jargon. As such, Dogberry is pleased with her effort and progress, and hopes that we do not meet again in the New Year.

REPEAT OFFENDER AWARD

WHAT HE SAID: A litany of offences mark Bolland’s trail through a disastrous 2013 for his use of English. Here are some of the worst howlers:

APRIL: The retailer sold ‘nearly 1m pieces of this monochrome strategy’. Seriously, who goes to their wardrobe in the morning and decides which ‘strategy’ to wear? And Monochrome? Black and white would suffice.

SEPTEMBER: M&S offers a ‘holistic experiential customer experience’. We think this means people can move between departments in a logical fashion, but it’s a very mangled phrase – and not Bolland’s last offence of the year.

NOVEMBER: ‘New features include our high impact Welcome Zones.’ What sounds like a concrete-reinforced adventure playground turns out to be mannequins placed by the door. He also boasted about the store’s ‘destination departments’ – whatever those are.

ANY PREVIOUS: Bolland has form, and his jargonising dates back beyond the start of the year. He was winner of 2012’s Dogberry award for such howlers as labelling shop signs as ‘totems’ and calling shelves ‘micro spacing solutions’.

VERDICT: Despite repeated warnings, he has shown no contrition and no attempts to change his ways. Guilty.

OVERALL WINNER

THE ACCUSED: Angela Ahrendts, chief executive, Burberry

WHAT SHE SAID: No-one, not even Marc Bolland, can match American Ahrendts for sheer unadulterated twaddle. Under the heading of ‘leverage the franchise’ in the group’s results, she said: ‘Burberry is under-penetrated in these entry categories to the brand.’

ANY MORE: She said the group had ‘success in the key shape strategy’ and told investors that the ‘replenishment heritage programmes remained robust’. Investors were, no doubt, left none the wiser.

ANY PREVIOUS: In 2012 she wrote: ‘Burberry exited doors not aligned with brand status and invested in presentation through both enhanced assortments and dedicated, customised real estate in key doors.’ This jungle of jumble is utterly impenetrable. We cannot even begin to guess at what she means.

VERDICT: Guilty.

CLOSING REMARKS: Next summer Ahrendts leaves our shores to join Apple as its head of retail. While we have no idea what she will actually do at the tech giant, maybe the Silicon Valley boffins can come up with a gadget that translates her words into understandable English. We can only hope.

OTHER NOTABLE ENTRANTS:

- Royal Mail boss Moya Greene made an impressive entrance onto Dogberry’s radar when she declared: ‘We are continuing to leverage our reputational and operational strengths to deliver improvements.’ She also describes letter-counting machines as ‘sortation capacity’. Dogberry fears we will see more of the Canadian in the coming year.

- Stuart Gulliver saw the bank he leads, HSBC, widely ridiculed after it announced a raft a job cuts by saying ‘the bank will be demising the roles of 942 relationship managers’.

- He wasn’t the only bank boss though – Barclays chief Anthony Jenkins described the resignation of investment boss Rich Ricci as ‘de-layering the organisation’. Even Ricci had a go, using ‘suitcase’ as a verb during the year.

- Not content with letting her boss do all the waffling, Burberry’s finance chief Stacey Cartwright also weighed in this year, describing the new Regent Street store as ‘the most digitally advanced physical brand experience to date’. By which she meant ‘shop’.

- Irene Rosenfeld, the boss of bizarrely-named Mondelez, had another strong year in jargon. She said: ‘Our product categories span breakfast, lunch, and dinner meal occasions, both at home and in foodservice locations.’ Meal occasions? Foodservice locations? This from a woman who thought renaming Cadbury – one of the world’s most recognised brands – as ‘Mondelez’ was a good idea. Case closed.